The advancement in self-publishing tools and technology is a lot to keep up with, so here’s a roundup of the news that I think mattered most to self-publishers in 2013 and will continue to shape the industry this year. 1. Ingram Spark Gives Amazon CreateSpace a Run for Its Money Ingram Content Group finally launched […] more »

In a big year for e-books, two behemoths went to court while new services and companies emerged. Apple faced allegations over e-book pricing, calling into question the prices of e-books in general. Amazon went to court over access to e-books but saw its case tossed. New services from Amazon and streaming e-book companies emerged in […] more »

It’s Christmas! Time for all you hard-working authors to gorge on mince pies and generally relax, right? Wrong! Christmas is one of the busiest times of the year for bookselling, and a really good time to be engaging with people, and letting them know about your book. Here are our top eight things authors can […] more »

Note: This Roundup will be on hiatus until Thursday, January 9th. To stay up-to-date with the final MediaShift stories of 2013, including our “Best of 2013 Series,” subscribe to our MediaShift Daily and Idea Lab Daily. Happy New Year! 1. Entitle takes a different approach to “Netflix for e-books” market (Seth Fiegerman / Mashable) 2. […] more »

Authors are choosing to crowdfund their work, and there are now options for them on which platform to use. The question is: Kickstarter, Indiegogo or Pubslush? To explore the pros and cons of those platforms, I interviewed a successful author from each of them to find out why they chose it and how they succeeded. […] more »

This crowdfunding author success story is part of our PBS MediaShift series on crowdfunding. This author crowdfunding segment is an interview with author Allan Karl who funded his book “FORKS: Three Years. Five Continents. One Motorcycle. A Quest for Culture, Cuisine And Connection” using the Kickstarter platform. Also read about: Pubslush Author Janna Leyde: “He […] more »

In part 1 of this series, I described several tools that can help authors and publishers gather and analyze data relating to their e-book releases. Now what? In this post, I am going to describe how metrics can be used to inform product and marketing decisions. I’ll wrap up with some examples from my company, […] more »